


Enjoy The Wedding: "The Sign of Three" as Fanfiction

by PlaidAdder



Series: Sherlock Meta [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Meta, Nonfiction, sign of three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 06:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My reaction to "Sign of Three," with reference to fanfiction, ACD canon, Mary Morstan and H/W slash, fanservice, and the always-absent Harry Watson</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enjoy The Wedding: "The Sign of Three" as Fanfiction

Someone sent me, a while back, a link to a piece that looks at  _Sherlock_  itself as fanfiction. I haven't read this piece yet; but I have no trouble accepting the central premise. There's a lot of legit popular culture and literature out there now that is in all its essentials fanfiction except for the fact that because it has found a reputable publisher/producer/network/distributor, it is not called fanfiction, and is treated like the Thing Itself. Michael Cunningham's  _The Hours,_ which a few years ago won just all the awards a book can win, is basically a  _Mrs. Dalloway_ fanfic. Zadie Smith's equally celebrated  _On Beauty_ is, so I'm told, a  _Howard's End_ fanfic. The cinemas and airwaves and intertubes are swarming with reboots, AUs, and updatings of stuff that was first introduced back in the dark ages when I was a child.  _Sherlock_ is basically an AU. The show itself is doing a lot of the things that we all do in our own fanfic. Take, for instance, what "Empty Hearse" does with the early ACD story "A Case of Identity." In CASE, Holmes figures out that his client's stepfather has been disguising himself and dating his stepdaughter under an assumed name for the purpose of preventing her from every marrying. He proposes to her, makes her swear to always be faithful to him, and then disappears under mysterious circumstances. Holmes works the case out pretty quickly, partly due to his knowledge of a then-new technological gadget known as the typewriter. He confronts the stepfather and orders him to stop; but he never actually tells his client what's going on. Asked why by Watson, Holmes quotes Hafiz to the effect that it's dangerous to snatch delusion from a woman.

In the 1890s maybe that made sense to Doyle's readers. Any twenty-first century person reading this knows that was bullshit. Holmes, the hero, the best and wisest man we've ever known, should have bloody told the poor woman that the man she was after all going to go on living with was not only trying to do her out of her income and independence but really rather creepily molesting her. And so Gatiss brings both the stepfather and the client into the 221B living room, so that once SHerlock's explained it to Molly, he can turn around and give the stepfather the reaming-out that he so richly deserves while at the same time undeceiving the poor stepdaughter. It's fix-it fic. A little teeny weeny fix-it fic that took less than a minute; but if you know the story, as soon as you hear "Mr. Windibank, you have been a complete and utter--" you just breathe this happy sigh of contentment. There. They fixed it.

I bring this up because "The Sign of Three" is, so far, the fanficciest episode of them all. As casefic, it's really only OK. The invisible knife thing is cool but it is really hard to see how you could be skewered from back to front and not notice. Well, I leave the fighting over that to the doctors and other medical enthusiasts. As an update of _The Sign of Four_ it is just barely there, although I will get more into that later on. But that doesn't matter that much, because this whole episode is about fixing something pretty heinous from ACD canon--which is, of course, the Hiatus.

As we've all been discussing of late, "Empty Hearse" takes a pretty crappy thing that Holmes did to Watson--hiding out for 3 years and never letting Watson know he wasn't really dead--and turns it into an elaborate and colossally callous exercise of really exquisite cruelty. Which pissed me off, though I enjoyed the episode overall. This was done, I guess, partly to create the "contrast" that Sherlock babbles about at the beginning of his Never-Ending Best Man Speech: we go from the absolute nadir of Sherlock's treatment of John to an episode in which Sherlock finally actually reveals, and makes credible, all the affection and love--yes, love, Sherlock uses the word, more than once--that we just knew, or maybe thought we were delusionally hoping, was under there somewhere. Now under normal circumstances we might reject the spectacle of Sherlock standing up there talking about how brave and wise and wonderful John is and how much he loves him; but after just having seen "The Empty Hearse," it's easier to swallow for two reasons. One: Sherlock knows that he has some BIG making up to do, and he realizes that this is the best opportunity he will ever get. The catatonic stare with which he responds to John's asking him must at least partly be coming from his memory of having been throttled, punched, and head-butted by John in the hours following his Dramatic Revelation. Holy shit, he's thinking, he is in fact actually still my friend. Having discovered that--despite his best efforts--he still actually has his one friend, he throws himself into being the best man with the same obsessiveness with which he approaches everything. It's very sweet. It's touching. I love watching it. And Two: After what happened to John in "Reichenbach Fall" and then got worse in "Empty Hearse," we are truly desperate for an episode that will treat the poor man well; and this one does. This is probably the happiest he's ever been; and perhaps may be the happiest he will ever get.

So it's fanservice, basically. And the fans who are being served are of course first and foremost Moffat and Gatiss; but there's plenty there for us as well. I think the whole drunk!Sherlock section went on much longer than it had to, though I'd be unwilling to give up the drunk!version of those text deductions we get in Sherlock-o-vision, or Sherlock drunkenly trying to punch out a guy who challenges his knowledge of the 250 kind of tobacco ash. Otherwise, I really wouldn't want to give any of it up, from Mrs. Hudson's inappropriately cheerful doom and gloom speeches about how this is the end of the great H/W partnership to Molly stabbing her date's hand with a fork when he disses Sherlock to John telling Sherlock he's not a puzzle solver but a drama queen (and Mary telling John that he's a drama queen too, and John just saying, "I know"). Well, I could give up Jeanine. Don't think she was adding much value. I note she will be back in "His Last Vow." Whatever. 

Oh. Yes. Mary.

Well, look, it's no good pretending this isn't a nasty turn-up for Johnlockers. Though I will say the Stag Night segment gives Johnlockers enough fuel for a thousand thousand Stag Night slash fics. But given that Watson's marriage to Mary is canon, I think so far they've done a very good job of softening the blow. Unlike Doyle, who marries Watson off at the end of the second novel, Moffat and Gatiss gave us two seasons of just the boys together doing their thing. As for how they're handling Mary, well, I was a little disappointed that we didn't get more backstory for her.  _The Sign of Four_ is really about her family history; I won't go into the whole summary, but suffice to say that since  _Sign of Four_ involves the 1857 Mutiny, stolen treasure, and a child-sized "savage" from the Andaman Islands named Tonga, it would be a real challenge to update that plot. The only things from  _Sign of Four_ that survive are: 1) the beginning of Sherlock's best man speech ("I cannot congratulate you...") is lifted from Holmes's response to Watson's announcement of their engagement; 2) we're informed that John's Mary is an orphan, just like the canonical Mary; 3) Jonathan Smalls trying to kill Major Sholto, although both characters have completely different backstories and the motive for the murder is basically new; and 4) the case Sherlock alludes to during the speech as "The Poison Giant"--that shot of the little person shooting poison blow-darts at John and Sherlock--is a visual reference to the infamous Tonga. But we still have one episode to go. So far, though, I have to say I am pleasantly surprised by the way they're handling Mary. Most of the things we know about her from ACD canon--she's brave, she's organized, she's clever, she loves John, and in terms of letting her husband drop everything at a momen't notice to gad about with Sherlock Holmes she has to be the most patient woman in Britain--are incorporated into her character. They've done what I would have done with her if I were in their position: they've made her part of the team instead of the Bitch Who Comes Between Them. She's funny, she's credible as someone who knows and loves John in ways that Sherlock doesn't, and she's also credible as someone who can build up a mutual like and respect with Sherlock. I actually like her. For now, anyway. (Haven't seen HIS LAST VOW. DO NOT TELL ME ABOUT IT.)

So John's married now. Well, you know, he always was, in canon, and those of us who were writing H/W before  _Sherlock_ came along have always had to deal with that. (I sound like everyone's boring great-uncle when I talk about this..."In MY day we didn't HAVE TV! We had to slash PRINT! OK, all right, so we had Jeremy Brett...but you kids don't know how good you have it!") We took different approaches. I personally dealt with it by [beginning the slash timeline after the Return and thus after Mary's death](../../series/41234). Others have done threesomes, adultery, pining!Sherlock, drunk!and disavowed!fumbling, what have you, there's plenty of ways to cope with it if you want to keep writing Johnlock post-Series 3. I personally won't be, because, well, I'm just going to miss Harry too much.

Ah yes. Harry. Didn't come to the wedding. Probably never going to appear on screen. Just as well perhaps. But it's too bad. Because Harry--[well, the Harry in my head, anyway](../../series/43194)\--she would have been there at the end to dance with poor Sherlock. He'd probably still have left early; but at least he would have had some company. But of course she would have no role to play in this timeline anyway. They're putting Mary into the position I created for her; and I think that's basically the right thing to do.

Mary's pregnancy is also interesting. The fact that Watson and Mary never had children is highly unusual for the time and [I always found it intriguing](../742927). I'll be interested to see what happens with this; there is great potential for good and evil in a pregnancy story line. But I thought it was a nice touch to have Sherlock acknowledge John and Mary as his surrogate parents. It cashes in on the stuff that was set up in the beginning of the episode about Sherlock and his mother, and it acknowledges the role that John has played in socializing him, which is quite frankly a pretty big part of the job. But we will see where all that goes.

***

On edit: Re the theory that the ACD canon Mary Morstan died in childbirth:

We never find out what Mary died of. All Watson says on the subject, in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” is that “in some way Holmes had learned of my recent bereavement” (or words to that effect). So, obviously he’s lost Mary. He could well have lost a child too, but there’s no particular reason to assume that, apart from it being a common enough way for relatively young and healthy women to die at that time. Nothing really definitively points to it, but nothing rules it out.


End file.
